Confidence in Compensation: Rethinking Pay at Work

By: RPI Tech Connect   March 27, 2024

Compensation has historically been difficult to talk about, and in many ways still is. In 2024, HR practitioners and comp professionals are yet again faced with challenges in navigating pay at work. From salary range disclosures in job listings to personalized compensation packages, it’s an evolving landscape.

In this episode of RPI Tech Connect, we break the taboo around compensation, focusing on building confidence and embracing change. Joined by seasoned experts, Melissa Olson, Director of Infor Solutions, and Marcus Mossberger, Future of Work Strategist at Infor and Editor in Chief of Hope @Work, tune in as we explore pay at work.

Whether you’re an HR practitioner or a curious listener, this episode offers invaluable guidance for approaching compensation conversations with clarity. Listen in to find out how technology and expert services converge to help HR professionals in fostering transparent, equitable workplaces.

Interested in listening to this episode on another streaming platform? Check out our directories.

Meet Today’s Guest, Marcus Mossberger

Marcus Mossberger is the Future of Work Strategist at Infor. As technology is a fundamentally human endeavor, it is critical to consider how it will transform the way people work in the future.

At Infor, Marcus helps organizations move from conservative strategies and systems to contemporary tools and technologies. His career has spanned various HR roles, strategy, product management, marketing and sales in industries such as healthcare, technology and professional services. You will frequently find him contributing thought-provoking material in a variety of publications and at industry events, with a focus on empowering people and organizations to reach their full potential.

Marcus most recently earned a post graduate certificate from the University of Sussex in The Psychology of Kindness and Wellbeing at Work. He previously earned a Master’s Degree in Human Resources from Ottawa University, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology from the University of Kansas.

Meet Today’s Guest, Melissa Olson

As RPI’s Director of Infor Solutions, Melissa Olson has been at the forefront of massive Infor CloudSuite and legacy Lawson implementations for well over a decade. Nowadays, you are likely to find Melissa in the role of Executive Oversight ensuring quality in HR Talent implementations and out in the community presenting, demonstrating, and connecting with clients.

Over the last 20 years of Melissa’s career, she has modified the Lawson code set as a programmer for a transportation agency, led an North American HCM implementation while tending to her day job as a HR Business Partner for a marketing and merchandising firm and built an HCM Practice with RPI from scratch while consulting.

With her unique mix of experience understanding organizational needs, deep knowledge of Infor People Solutions, and the boundaries of the Infor technical extension toolset, Melissa enjoys tackling organizational problems with solutions that are process focused more so than product focused.

Meet Your Host, Chris Arey

Chris Arey is an experienced B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental principles required in marketing.

With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.

Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.

About RPI Tech Connect

RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.

RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.

Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe to RPI Tech Connect below.

Transcript

Chris (00:02)
Compensation has historically been difficult to talk about, and in many ways still is. In 2024, HR practitioners and comp professionals are yet again faced with challenges and navigating pay at work. From salary range disclosures and job listings to managing employee expectations, it’s an evolving landscape. But we’re not here to talk about the woes and fears associated with compensation.

In fact, quite the opposite. Today on RPI Tech Connect, we’re going to be talking about how to approach compensation with confidence. From the way we think about it, to the way we leverage technology to support pay decisions. It doesn’t have to be a source object. Because when we approach conversations around pay, with the right attitude and with the right resources, we take a step towards creating a more equitable workplace.

And to help us through today’s discussion, we have two experts joining us. InFORCE Future of Work Strategist, Marcus Mossberger, and RPI’s Director of InFORCE Solutions, Melissa Olson. Melissa, Marcus, thanks for hanging out with me today. Could you tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Marcus Mossberger (01:16)
Like previous Chris.

Melissa Olson (01:18)
Thank you.

Chris (01:23)
Melissa, you wanna go first?

Melissa Olson (01:24)
Sure, I’ll go first. Yeah. I have been kind of in the HR space for over 20 years now. Started on the public sector side, just as a programmer trying to update the system to match any kind of these transportation laws, regulatory things. It really got me into the HR payroll benefits piece from the back end.

my career progressed and I really wanted to learn the functional side and I moved into an HRES manager role, did that for a while and managed an implementation along with a team for a North American marketing company. And I’ve been with RPI for 12 years now, worked on building out the HCM team consultants here, the practice, the methodology back in the day for HCM implementation. So,

long introduction, but I’ve had it kind of, lots of years are on my path. And now, you know, being able to do things like this with you, Chris and Marcus, to talk to the community and talk about what we’re seeing and what we see with a lot of clients today.

Chris (02:22)
Haha.

Awesome. Marcus?

Marcus Mossberger (02:40)
Yeah, thanks again for having me, Chris. So my name is Marcus Mossberger. I am a strategist at Infor, but started my career similar to Melissa as an HR practitioner. But the last 10 years I’ve been with Infor focused on the world of work. And I absolutely love to just think and dream about where the future of work is headed. So really looking forward to our conversation today.

Chris (03:07)
Awesome. So happy to have both of you on the show today. We have an exciting topic ahead of us. And I think a good foundation for where we kick this off would be how compensation has evolved over the last couple of years. So Melissa, I’d like to start with you if you could tell us what’s been going on.

Melissa Olson (03:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, so in the last couple of years, there has been this idea of transparency around, you know, salary. And I think it’s from COVID. There was a big, you know, everybody left. I don’t even know all the terms anymore. There’s so many, the quiet fire, the quiet hire, the, you know, whatever. And organizations were having a hard time.

retaining and recruiting talent and you know people are like hey there’s something better out there for me I can get paid more out there and then there’s also the other side of it where there’s DEI initiatives there’s the idea of you know traditionally people that have been underrepresented in organizations whether it’s professional technology or other fields where they’re paid you know.

pennies on the dollar for white males. So in order to have this, states like Washington, California, Colorado, introduced these pay transparency rules where if you’re going to post a job there, no matter where you live, no matter where they’re hiring from, if they want somebody remote or hybrid, they need to put the salary bands. So, you know, we’re seeing…

We’ve always followed those three states and kind of take a look at it, how it’s doing in there to determine if the rest of the country is going to adopt. And it’s, with so many remote positions available today, you get on LinkedIn and you see it everywhere. So I don’t know that it’s necessarily just those states and the county cities that have passed it anymore. I think anybody to be competitive.

anybody to show that they’re trying to do better is putting that. And I think I’ve read a stat that the organizations that put those pay bands there are seeing at least a 30 % increase in applications coming in and completed applications coming in and better suited applicants coming in. So that’s finally getting some numbers behind it.

Chris (05:46)
Nice. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. And I do agree that you’re seeing more, you know, Colorado, California, Washington state kind of been leaders in the space of, you know, introducing new progressive, like laws that help employees. And while we’re seeing this legal change from, you know, happening across the country now, and even abroad, how does that trickle down into like,

the workforce, how do employees feel about this thing? So Marcus, I’m curious, what are your thoughts on the consequences that are happening as a result of these new pieces of legislation?

Marcus Mossberger (06:27)
Yeah, I think, you know, compensation, Chris, is still really important, isn’t it? I don’t know about you two. I’m not independently wealthy yet and therefore comp remains a high priority for me. You know, we did a survey a couple months ago of 13 ,000 individuals, all of which were in the process of looking for a new job. And we asked, we essentially asked them why, why are you looking?

Number one reason was I don’t see a future in my current situation, my current employer, and therefore I want to look for something new. But number two was compensation. I want more money. So it’s interesting to me the evolution of how people perceive the importance of compensation over time. And I do try not to make generalizations about the generations, although it is fun.

Chris (07:24)
Hahaha.

Marcus Mossberger (07:25)
I try not to make fun of the younger generations, but the older I get, the more I do enjoy that. But the one thing that’s interesting about the next generation is that they’re pushing for this pay transparency, right? That Melissa was talking about earlier, but they’re also recognizing that, you know, pay is one part of their overall, you know, experience at work. And a lot of them actually have proven to be willing to give up maybe.

some of that pay to trade it back for flexibility, maybe to work less, maybe to have less stress, maybe to not be in a supervisory role. And I think they’re also starting to really push for, I guess what I’ll call personalization in how they get paid, wanting to have choices and options. So, you know, I think it’s gonna be super interesting in the next decade, you know, how this continues to evolve.

Chris (08:24)
Nice, yeah, so let’s explore more about this personalization of comp that you mentioned there. So obviously a one size fit approach isn’t gonna work for everybody and employees have different priorities of what’s important to them. So what does that look like? How do you facilitate and understand what employees want?

Marcus Mossberger (08:47)
Yeah, I don’t know, Melissa, I’m curious to hear your perspective on this. But again, the way that I look at it, Chris, I don’t know if you’re old enough to remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books. I totally read those when I was a kid. I had a Western one, right, where it’s like, OK, what do you want to do with this guy? You want to shoot him or you want to negotiate with him? And I’m like, I’m going to shoot him. And then you turn to page 35 and it’s like, yeah, he outgrew you and you’re dead. So you get.

Chris (08:59)
I’m familiar with the concept.

Melissa Olson (09:12)
Haha.

Thank you.

Marcus Mossberger (09:18)
But I think that’s kind of it kind of encompasses what people are looking for is a choose your own adventure approach to compensation and benefits. I’m going to combine those together because frequently the total compensation package that we get from our employers encompasses both, right? The monetary pieces and some of the non -monetary pieces. So.

Chris (09:28)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (09:44)
Again, I think there’s a bit of an acknowledgement that why should I have the same kind of structure in terms of comp and benefits for me as an old guy versus somebody just getting out of college that has totally different priorities, totally different needs. And so I think there’s a desire to give folks that flexibility and say, hey, you know what? If you don’t need family health insurance right now, that’s great. That’s going to save us a ton of money as a company.

Let us give you opportunities to utilize some of that, the budget that we had associated with that in other ways that you’ll find valuable. Melissa, what do you think?

Melissa Olson (10:25)
Yeah, no, I agree totally because, you know, in the old days, prior to us, the boomer days, right, you go get a job and you look for good benefits and a good pension and you stay with them forever. Then our generation came along and we were like, I don’t know about staying forever, but I do get the good benefits and the good, you know, be nice to get a little bit of a retirement. You know, we’re at the tail end of that, right? So.

Marcus Mossberger (10:42)
Yeah.

Melissa Olson (10:54)
But you know what I’m seeing and it’s not necessarily just in your generations. I think even our age, you know, you get to this point where you want to have some meaning in your life and you’re spending so much time at work and it is what you’re doing. Are you, you know, that alignment with the values of the company, the alignment with what the company does or produces. So, you know, I think you mentioned about giving up some of the comp or benefits.

in order to have flexibility. I also see it kind of the other way where people are leaving Big Four and places that just run you into the ground for lots of money. So it’s like, okay, I’m not gonna take a lot of money either to work for a company that isn’t really aligned with what I want out of my life. And whether that is that flexibility to go to kids sporting events and plays.

or it’s to work out in the middle of the day. I was listening to this E of Atlassian talking about that’s a fully remote company. And they didn’t decide to do a comeback or a hybrid. He doesn’t understand why people are doing the hybrid because you put these expectations on the people who are coming in. So when everything’s fully remote and you have offices for specific reasons for, you know,

Marcus Mossberger (12:16)
Mm -hmm.

Melissa Olson (12:19)
people who need to get out of office, people that may want to come in a couple of days for the social aspect or whatever it is, it allows people to be most productive at the times they’re most productive. So if they don’t get online until 11 o ‘clock in the afternoon or in the morning, because they’ve done whatever in the morning, but then they work until eight or nine at night, that’s fine because you are getting more. And it also showed that it saved them approximately two hours of.

hours a day ish, two hours, you know, I don’t remember what the whole time was of the people in Sydney where they are based, how much commute time it saved them, but again that either goes back to productivity or goes back to your life and to be able to have something like that in addition to compensation. So our talk is compensation today.

Chris (13:10)
It’s only a portion of it, right? There’s so much more to it than that. The work experience. Thank you for sharing that. For those listening in, I do want to clarify this because it’s been brought up a couple of times now. Generations on today’s episode. We have one millennial, that’s myself, and I believe Marcus and Melissa are both Gen X. Is that correct? Nice. No boomers on this show. Not yet, anyway.

Melissa Olson (13:11)
There’s so many factors. There are so many factors at this point.

Marcus Mossberger (13:28)
Okay.

Yep. Yep.

Melissa Olson (13:32)
Correct.

Marcus Mossberger (13:34)
Yeah.

Melissa Olson (13:34)
No they aren’t.

No.

Chris (13:39)
So then I want to talk now about how so we, you know, personalization is a key component to benefits and compensation and the whole like work experience. But how can the people who are responsible for overseeing those areas feel more confident and having those discussions with one, their employees and two, like, you know, in the recruiting process when you’re putting these jobs up on, you know, Indeed or Glassdoor or or LinkedIn.

How can they feel more confident in those pursuits? That’s an open -ended question. Whoever feels more comfortable can take it.

Melissa Olson (14:20)
I mean, as an HR professional, it makes it very hard for just the regular person to be confident. There’s a lot of analysis that goes in to determine what somebody should get paid for their experience, their qualifications, what the job is. But then you get cost of living and you get so and so across the street is paying this. And, you know, it becomes you don’t want it to be gut.

driven. So, you know, it’s arming managers and recruiters with as much information, giving them that information in an easy, consumable way, a dashboard, something where they can see market, they can see, you know, comparable, like we look at homes, right? We see the comps for homes in a neighborhood, we should see comps for people, what people in this experience level, what, what

are they getting paid based on the market, not just what is the position paying, which is what we’re used to looking at. So, I mean, Marcus.

I don’t know, that’s a tough one for me.

Marcus Mossberger (15:30)
Melissa, I really like your analogy of home comps. That’s smart. That’s totally what you want to know is if I’m looking at buying this house or in this case, maybe joining this company, what are other organizations paying or what are other homes worth in this neighborhood? And again, it just keeps coming back to transparency. It’s funny, compensation and pay, it’s kind of a taboo topic, isn’t it? Like, you know,

There’s other taboo topics at work. We try to avoid politics and religion and things like that. But the funny thing is I think a lot of those taboo topics are becoming a little bit more commonplace. I think there’s an acknowledgement and even a need to say, let’s just have some candid conversations with folks. It’s funny, I was at the HR technology conference in Vegas last year and I went to a pay transparency session and…

Melissa Olson (16:05)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (16:28)
the speaker to start the session before he’d really done anything. He said, I want you to turn to the person next to you and tell them how much money you make. And we all just sat there and like stared at each other. Yeah, I was like, oh my gosh. And thankfully he quickly interrupted and said, no, you don’t actually have to do that. But it just illustrated how we’re so reluctant to talk about money.

Chris (16:37)
Haha

Melissa Olson (16:42)
I’m not a real friend.

Chris (16:42)
Uhhh…

Marcus Mossberger (16:54)
And I think the other challenge too, and you were alluding to this, Melissa, is how do you arm, for instance, a manager or supervisor with the data they need to be informed in having this conversation? And then, Chris, when we talk about personalization of this stuff, how in the world do you standardize and scale that? Not easy things, admittedly. But I do think we’re getting to the point where you see this level of transparency in other parts of life.

I’ll give you a funny example. I’m originally from Kansas City, so I’m still very happy about the recent back -to -back Super Bowl. But my point is, you know what? I know exactly what Patrick Mahomes makes. And now we’re all going to be debating, can we afford some of our players next year that we want to have back? Compensation is an open book in sports and a lot of times in government. What would happen in the world of corporate America if we all knew what each other made?

Chris (17:31)
Boo.

Melissa Olson (17:33)
I’m gonna go get it.

Chris (17:50)
Yeah.

Melissa Olson (17:54)
Right. Yeah, that would be interesting because then you would know your value. And I think that’s a really hard thing at this point for somebody to convey what their value is. Especially if you’ve been in a position for 20 years, you don’t know in the market what you would be worth because you’ve just been paid a certain thing and you assign that value to yourself. I am worth, you know, X dollars.

But maybe there were so much more. And if you saw, like you said, you saw the first second round of draft getting, which is the kids coming out of college making 90 ,000 now. And you’re like, oh my god, it took me 10 years to get to 90 ,000. I am behind at this point. How do you get ahead? When you’ve started out behind and now there’s this transparency. Generations.

Chris (18:37)
Hell yeah.

Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (18:47)
Yeah.

Melissa Olson (18:52)
after us will benefit, but for those of us in midst of it, yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (18:57)
Melissa, great term again, the term value, right? So again, going back to your analogy of home comps, like what’s the value of my home? What’s the value that I bring to an organization? I think what’ll be fascinating too in the next decade or two is understanding is that value determined by the amount of time that you commit during a week, during a day, right? You hear talk about the four day week and people get paid the same, but only working four days.

Will we eventually reach the point where we don’t get paid for our time, our minutes, and our hours, but rather the value we bring? I think the challenge with that in many industries and professions is it’s hard to quantify the value you bring. It’s hard to determine. Yeah, exactly. If you’re making widgets, it’s pretty easy. But most of us don’t make widgets. And so it’s harder to say, hey, if you do this, I’ll pay you that.

Chris (19:42)
Hmm.

Melissa Olson (19:43)
One, two, six,

Right.

Marcus Mossberger (19:55)
I’ll give you a tangible example. If I’m going to, if Melissa, I said, I’m going to write an article for you, then the deliverable is the article. And it doesn’t matter if it took me two hours or two days to write it. You’re going to pay me the same no matter what. Eventually, I would love to see us get to the point as a society where that’s how we pay people. It’s on what you delivered.

Melissa Olson (20:09)
Right.

Marcus Mossberger (20:18)
I don’t care how long, if it takes you a fraction of the time it takes, Chris, then good for you. You can probably make a lot more money because you can do 50 articles in a week.

Chris (20:22)
Hmm.

That’s a good point too. And I want to talk about this concept of value too. You know, something we’ve seen change over maybe the last 20 years or so is like employee loyalty has changed, right? Like you’re going to be rewarded more when you acquire new skills in different roles than you would have if you had perhaps stayed in the same role at the same company for a long time. And it feels almost

I don’t want to say backwards, but at the same time, that’s what’s happened. And it’s, I don’t, what do guys think of that?

Melissa Olson (21:02)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (21:09)
Melissa, I’m curious to know your perspective on this because I remember being in HR and people would come to me and say, I’ve got this guy, he’s so good and we’re gonna lose him. I wanna give him a 25 % pay increase. And I in HR was like, we can’t do that. The maximum amount policy allows is 10, 15 % less there’s a promotion. Here’s all the rules and here’s all the restrictions.

Melissa Olson (21:22)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (21:34)
And then we watch the guy walk out the door, go across the street to one of our competitors and easily command 25 to 30 % more than he was making. So we’re reluctant to admit that there are times where it’s appropriate to say this person deserves a significant increase. So to your point, Chris, we have actually created an environment where people expect to have to leave in order to gain that. Why is that?

Melissa Olson (21:44)
exactly.

Chris (22:01)
Yeah.

Melissa Olson (22:03)
Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve had some conversations offline about this, Marcus, and it is really about that. Your organization sees you as what they hired you, even though you’re continuously improving, they still see what they hired and then they see the shiny object outside the organization. That’s a wild card. They could just be the next coming. Right. And I’m willing to pay.

for the next coming. I already got you. Why do I have to pay for you? You’ve been doing great here, but you are what you were. But you know, Chris, you bring up that point, you know, that’s what, and I know Marcus, you’ve been mentioning this a lot in your newsletters is, you know, that skills first economy, especially with AI now, it really is. Who knows whose job is still gonna be here in, you know, a year. So what are your skills? What can you bring?

And if what I hire you for isn’t exactly there in a year, I want to know that you’ve got skills that can do something else or work with this new, wherever the new technology is going to lead in that organization. So it’ll be interesting to see what the next couple of years, how driving by skills more than driving by experience will affect comp.

Chris (23:28)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (23:29)
Yeah, and you know what, you bring up an interesting point. So the 2023 Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, I don’t know if you’ve read that, they just came out with a new one. They tend to have good stuff in those reports. But the 2023 report talked about the end of jobs, which was a very provocative headline. But what they really meant was, someday we may stop hiring people for jobs and hire them for their skills, as you just pointed out, Melissa.

Well, then how in the world do you determine somebody’s value? And you also bring up another like, you know, whole other ball of wax that we could discuss, which is paying people by provide for their tenure or for their experience versus their skills and abilities that may actually not have anything to do with them being around for very long. So again, it’s just there’s so many questions right now about how to determine the value of people and what they bring to an organization.

Melissa Olson (24:18)
Mm -hmm.

Marcus Mossberger (24:24)
and then making sure that that is equitably sustained over time as those people gain more experience, more skills. You know, again, that’s the challenge.

Chris (24:37)
It is the challenge, but I think we have some potential solutions for those who are listening in on how to navigate this, right? I mean, we’ve got the software, this technology, and there’s also the services branch that can accompany that. So Marcus, could you by chance share what you would recommend for those out there who are struggling with all this?

Marcus Mossberger (25:02)
Yeah, again, it comes back to you said it, Chris, it’s a combination of how do we use the technology, but also how do we get people to adopt the technology? I was literally reading a report from Gartner earlier today and it was talking about, you know, what are the biggest challenges that CHROs are facing in the world of HR technology? And at the top of the list was adoption of the technology.

And the key here is the technology is going to help individuals make better informed decisions to be able to communicate the why behind compensation ranges and decisions. And that’s what we need people to embrace. So, you know, the traditional term that I know that you all have a strong practice in is change management. I don’t like that term because again, that next generation doesn’t necessarily want to be

manage that old school command and control doesn’t fly well. What we really are talking about is change enablement. How do we empower frontline managers and supervisors to have candid conversations with their people by giving them data, by giving them the reasoning behind and by asking them to have a bi -directional kind of feedback loop into, does some of this need to change? Do we need to evolve? Do we need to offer more flexible benefits?

If we’re going to retain, for instance, the more tenured, I didn’t say older, tenured nurses in our health care institutions, then we need to offer them lump sum payments in their 403Bs. And they’ll be like, hey, that’s something that would make me stay or that would make me join your organization. So we’ve got to have that flexibility in those conversations, I think.

Chris (26:51)
That sounds like we’re getting back to the personalization thing too, right? Yeah. Love it. Well, we are getting to close to time on today’s segment. And before we wrap up, I like to ask our, my guests, this one question. It’s an important question. And I’ll be curious to see how you both answer it differently, but if you could offer today’s audience, one action will take it away.

Marcus Mossberger (26:57)
You’re great.

Chris (27:20)
about compensation or benefits or navigating all this, what would it be? Marcus, we can start with you.

Marcus Mossberger (27:28)
Sure, I tell you what, it comes back to what I said earlier. Have the conversation. I know it’s difficult, it’s taboo, people are afraid to discuss it. Ask people, what do you want? What do you need? What do you expect? How has that changed over the last couple of years now that you have kids or now that your kids have left the house? I just think it’s about open communication. And again, we have to be willing to have those conversations most people are so reluctant to.

And if you don’t ask people what they want, what their expectations are, guessing is not a great strategy.

Chris (28:08)
It sounds so obvious, but it couldn’t be more like, of course, this is the way forward. Just ask people what they want. Be candid, be open, be honest. Yeah, love it.

Marcus Mossberger (28:14)
Right.

Melissa Olson (28:17)
Yeah, well, yeah, because I mean, when you say guessing, it was always like, oh, health and wellness. People all want gym membership reimbursement, right? If we offer that, that’s going to make everybody healthy and well. But that’s not the one size fits all. So I think it’s like people, leaders may take what they think would be a great add on and think all their employees would love it.

Marcus Mossberger (28:27)
Right.

Chris (28:34)
Yeah

Melissa Olson (28:46)
But yeah, not necessarily. But there’s so many conversations I could go with where you were going, Marcus, because it’s not just the compensation, it’s that skilling, it’s that career, talent mobility around the organization. And you mentioned the people on the other side, the culture. If this is already a culture of closed, of secrecy, because they are trying to save money and hide things, that’s going to be a hard thing to overcome.

So takeaway I’d say today, you know, you’ve heard Marcus and I both quoting different statistics from different places. You know, when you get really busy, it’s really hard to see what’s outside of like your day -to -day tasks, because it’s just fires, but really go out there and learn about what’s going on in different states. Learn about what’s going on in, you know, the benefits arena, not traditional benefits, but you know, this retention side.

of keeping your employees and hiring top talent. Spend half an hour during your lunchtime reading or listening to a podcast or getting an email like Marcus’s to your in basket or to your email that will give you some insights and help guide you.

Chris (30:02)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (30:02)
Yeah, that’s a great point, Melissa. There’s one topic we didn’t hit here that I just want to at least mention before we go. Sometimes it’s not how much you’re paid, but how frequently you’re paid. And so the idea of getting paid immediately following a shift, right? This concept of daily pay for a lot of folks, they’re like, Hey, do you want to pick up this shift Friday night? And you’re like, what if I said you’d get paid at the end of your shift Friday night and then Saturday? Right.

Chris (30:29)
That’s a good incentive. Yeah.

Melissa Olson (30:32)
Yeah.

Marcus Mossberger (30:32)
So, I mean, it’s again, that’s a more kind of recent way of incentivizing people that we’re starting to see more frequently. And then just one last thing that again, I just think is really important is communicating your total compensation value that you’re providing as an employer to people. We don’t do a very good job of that. I don’t think people understand how much goes into the full benefit packages and everything.

Melissa Olson (31:01)
Marcus, it’s so hard to get a total reward statement out. Yeah, it really, yeah, it’s coming from so many sources. So, you know, we feel your pain out there. All those people who are trying, spending six, eight weeks trying to put that together for your employees.

Chris (31:03)
Hahaha.

Marcus Mossberger (31:03)
Right.

Well, we as technology providers should make that easier, shouldn’t we?

Agreed.

Chris (31:24)
Thank you both so much for sharing your perspective with me today in the audience. Marcus, it was a pleasure to have you on the show. Melissa, welcome back. For those of you tuning in, thanks for stopping by. If you have a question about today’s episode or you need help with comp in 2024, we invite you to email us at podcast at rpic .com. Again, that’s podcast at rpic .com. Thanks again. We’ll see you next time.

Marcus Mossberger (31:52)
Thanks Chris.

Melissa Olson (31:52)
Thanks.